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Watchmen
sales
rankings in its initial releasecompiled
by John Jackson Miller, The
Comics Chronicles

Originally released in
comic-book form in 1986 and 1987, Watchmen
by Alan Moore
and Dave Gibbons debuted
to a comics market that was in better shape than it had been in years —
partially due to the distribution network known as the "direct market."

Through the end of the 1970s, most comic
books
reached readers through the newsstand distribution system, whereby
distributors sold copies through grocery stores, convenience stores,
and drugstores. The stores did not own unsold copies outright --
rather, they stripped the covers off unsold copies and returned them
for credit. Retailers exercised next to no control over what comics
were sent to their stores, so selection changed at random. And the
comics in the system were generally subject to Comics Code Authority
approval, limiting their content.

In the 1970s, a number of startups began
distributing comics for the major publishers to the handful of comic
book stores in existence -- on the condition that the retailers buy the
comics outright. This was no problem for comics shops, which had the
ability to sell back issues on the secondary market -- and the fact
that retailers could order the specific comics they wanted and actually
get them proved to be a major advantage. Further, the comics they
purchased were not bound by the Comics Code, and thus could address
more adult topics.

These elements proved a major
comparative advantage
for comic book stores -- and in the early 1980s both comic book stores
and the new "direct market" distributors flourished. Major publishers
including Marvel
and DC
began publishing titles specifically for the direct market, avoiding
the newsstand -- and found that reader appetite existed for limited
series, new formats, and experimental price points. By the spring of
1986, the direct market had already made major successes out of Crisis on
Infinite Earths and Batman: The
Dark Knight Returns. DC's Watchmen,
released
into the comics-shop market May, would continue that trend.

Watchmen
is
one of the most reprinted comics series in history -- but where did
Watchmen rank at the time it came out? There are challenges in
answering that question. First, many competing comics still had heavy
newsstand sales and sold subscriptions, whereas Watchmen was a limited
series principally targeting the direct market. Second, its sales were
spread out across a variety of direct-market distributors that did not
report their sales. Only the sales of one of the larger ones, Capital City Distribution,
are known to The Comics Chronicles — but those original orders are
known exactly from internal records, as is the ranking of each issue at
Capital that month, versus other titles.

Watchmen
was marketed at a price point twice the going rate for the best-selling
comics of the day: $1.50, versus 75 cents. That fact, in part, may have
prevented it from placing higher in the unit sales charts — although in
dollar terms, it obviously did much better. We see the Capital City
sales and the rankings for each issue of Watchmen here:

Cover
Date

Ship
Date

Capital City
Orders

C.C.
Rank

#1 book that
month
at Capital City Distribution

Watchmen #1

Sep-86

May 13

34,100

5th

Classic X-Men #1

Watchmen #2

Oct-86

Jun 20

38,350

10th

The Man of Steel #1

Watchmen #3

Nov-86

Jul 8

38,000

10th

The Man of Steel #3

Watchmen #4

Dec-86

Aug 12

40,500

8th

The Man of Steel #5

Watchmen #5

Jan-87

Sep 9

33,150

11th

Superman Vol. 2 #1

Watchmen #6

Feb-87

Oct 14

32,700

15th

Superman Vol. 2 #2

Watchmen #7

Mar-87

Nov 11

30,150

Prob. Uncanny X-Men #215

Watchmen #8

Apr-87

Dec 9

28,150

Prob. Uncanny X-Men #216

Watchmen #9

May-87

Jan 13

28,150

15th

Uncanny X-Men #217

Watchmen #10

Jul-87

Feb 10

26,850

13th

Uncanny X-Men #218

Watchmen #11

Aug-87

May 19

28,300

13th

Punisher #1

Watchmen #12
(canc.)

Oct-87

31,900

9th

Uncanny X-Men #220

Watchmen #12
(res.)

Oct-87

Jun 23

34,150

6th

Uncanny X-Men #221

The
figures
above represent preorders, and do not include reorders. Reorder
availability in the 1980s was at a far earlier stage than in later
years, when publishers became able to adjust print runs late in the
game to respond to advance reorders close to the print date. Also, Watchmen
#12was
actually solicited twice by Capital City. Orders were taken for it
for April 1987 — but the issue was rescheduled for May, after #11 —
which had been initially scheduled to ship March 17, 1987, was
rescheduled twice. #12's orders were still ranked by Capital in April,
however, as if it had come out then; and even though the issue came out
in the first week of June, it was ranked once and for all with the
May-shipping books. We see that the extra month boosted preorders by
7%, giving #12 more initial
preorders through Capital than #1
had. Rankings are not available for #7
and #8.
Shipping dates above come from Comics
Buyer's Guide's
"Comics In Your Future" column, which itself compiled the dates that
distributors said they expected the books from the printer. (The ship
date is not the in-store on-sale date, but precedes it by a few days
depending on the distributor and the comics shop involved. My own
records indicate I purchased #5 on September 13, 1987, which would be
"New Comics Friday" at the shop and three days after it hit the
distributor, if these dates are to be trusted.)

Watchmen #4
was the title's best-seller by far through Capital City, and is likely
the singe issue available in greatest supply today because of it. The
reason likely owes to seasonality, which was a major factor for comics
shops in the 1980s (and far more so than it is today). The industry
phrase "Black September" referred to the dropoff in orders that always
followed the return of kids to school after summer; here, it clearly
had an impact. Many of Watchmen's core readers were actually college
age -- and actually more likely to be near a comics shop in the fall --
but perhaps not enough to blunt the impact of something affecting all
comics sales.

Watchmen never topped the charts at
Capital City in unit sales -- again, that $1.50 price point. Watchmen #12 sold
just slightly more than half the copies that Capital sold of its top
issue that month, Uncanny X-Men #221.
Contrast also the Capital orders for Watchmen#2 with The Man of
Steel,
the Superman relaunch title. Man of Steel #1 moved 125,400 copies of
its direct market edition and 51,500 copies of its newsstand edition
through Capital. And in all cases, the top-seller for the month was
also available on the newsstand, so the gap is probably wider.

What part of Watchmen's
sales did Capital City represent? That information is known only to DC,
but we can make some guesses. Comparing Capital sales versus numbers in
postal Statements of Ownership in DC titles, Capital in 1986 and 1987
represented approximately 10 to 15% of the sales of the average DC
title sold on the newsstand. But for a direct market phenomenon like
Watchmen, Capital's sales would be expected to be a larger part of the
orders, perhaps twice that level, with other comics shop distributors
also selling more than their typical share.

Another element impacting Capital's
orders was that Glenwood
Distributors,
one of the major players in the direct market boom of the mid-1980s,
ceased operations on March 20, 1987. Several hundred retailers were
left with unfilled orders. "Coupled with order reductions done by most
retailers and distributors in the first quarter of this year," wrote Milton Griepp in
Capital's Internal
Correspondence,
"this disruption has produced some genuinely scarce books recently." So
it's possible that for issues #11 and #12, Capital's share is even
larger than it is for earlier months. Glenwood's last DC shipment was
March 17, after #10 shipped. Part of the Capital jump at the end of the
run almost
certainly comes from Glenwood's lost accounts.

While not topping the direct market
charts in its
initial release, Watchmen's penetration in those charts is remarkable
for a title at double the going the price point -- and involving no
established franchise characters. Top-ten appearances for such projects
are rare to be found then or now; Image and Valiant in the early 1990s
regularly broke into the top ranks, although not at such a high price
point. Watchmen's initial performance may be singular in that regard.

Finally, Capital City records do include
some
information on the very first trade paperback collection of Watchmen --
the format in which the vast majority of its readers have found it
since. Initial orders for the first printing were 7,650 copies at
Capital, with the second printing getting initial orders of 2,335
copies. Solicited at 384 pages for $14.95, Capital referred to it in
May 1987 as the "best price-point marketing DC has done yet." That
edition was the first of many, and today, Watchmen continues
to sell and sell.